Tech

I listened to Beats 1 for a week and all I got was a headache

Apple's Beats 1 online radio station is like listening to music in all caps.

On the surface, the live-ish web station created for Apple Music features programming from popular DJs stationed in Los Angeles, New York and London, as well as guest programs hosted by musicians themselves. Beyond that, it's a new way for Apple Music to provide content recommendations to subscribers to differentiate itself from competitors such as Spotify.

Apple's senior VP or software and services Eddy Cue recently toldMashable other services, which offer streaming of huge music libraries aren't anything special. What will set Apple Music apart from the others is the "connection" it offers between users and the music. Apple Music is attempting to be human in a way other services aren't.

This is why there is a "For You" section, which puts personalized content recommendation front and center in Apple Music, and Connect, a weird social networking feed to connect artists with listeners. Of course, Beats 1 is a part of Apple Music, too.

Beats 1 started as the pet project of composer and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who wanted a radio-like experience not based on market research. It would be a place where up-and-coming artists could get exposed to a wider audience. A place where people could get excited about music.

Apple tapped former BBC Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe, whom Reznor called "the first and only choice," to set the tone for the service. While he leads programming in Los Angeles, the other two top celebrity DJs — Ebro Darden in New York and Julie Adenuga in London — play music which often reflects their city's tastes.

I DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE YELLING ABOUT

The first thing you notice about Beats 1 when it comes to pure sonics is that it sounds very much like traditional radio. In other words, it's compressed to the point of absurdity. At best, the audio quality is bearable; at worst, it'll give you a headache.

We're not talking about the bit-rate compression (the sort of compression you're familiar with in low-quality streaming audio). Rather, it's the dynamic-range compression, which squashes the volume range of audio. While these two things have similarities, there are key differences.

With file formats such as MP3 and AAC, bytes of (debatably) extraneous data are taken out of audio to produce a smaller-sized file. This is why the MP3 files you have from the Napster days are small in size, but (arguably) lack the richness of the lossless FLAC files featured on services like Tidal.

If you need an extreme example of bit-rate compression, pull up an older YouTube video and pay attention to the audio quality.

Dynamic compression is when an audio signal is processed in such a away that the loudest sounds are made quieter, and the quietest sounds are made louder. It sounds a bit like Will Ferrell's Jacob Silj character from Saturday Night Live.

Audio on @Beats1 is very compressed. It really is just like Radio on the internet!

Compare a track streaming in Beats 1 against a track streaming in regular Apple Music, and the Beats 1 track will be substantially louder, with artificially boosted treble and bass. The difference is night and day.

This audio trickery is a trademark of old-school terrestrial radio where stations competed with one another to have the strongest sounding signal. This made sense when listeners had to tune the radios in their cars and homes. But when it comes to the Internet, none of this applies.

The audio quality of Beats 1 is pretty appalling and there's no good reason for that. I constantly found myself setting the volume on my phone to below 50% or less where I would otherwise be at 70% or more.

Unfortunately, the sonics of Beats 1 make listening an exercise in frustration more often than not. To me, it dominates the experience.

The Music

If you listen to Beats 1 for a long time, you're going to hear a lot of music. In one week, I heard all the modern pop you'd expect but also classic hip hop, jazz fusion, Brazilian pop, 80s dance classics and even psychobilly, an obscure mix of punk, rock and country (think Elvis meets The Ramones).

The variety can be a blessing and a curse, depending on the program you're listening to.

Some of the main programming feels schizophrenic: It's not uncommon to hear Mumford & Sons transition right into a Skrillex song. It makes for a pretty odd listening experience and I struggle to imagine that people are going to stay tuned in for a long period of time after a series of those changeovers.

A playlist needs to create a mood, and when it jumps all over the musical spectrum, it's jarring. This is why good albums and playlists are organized with continuity in mind. You might tune in to Beats 1 and settle into a cool laid back groove from neo-soul artist Leon Bridges, then be blindsided by loud alternative rock from Nothing But Thieves, which is literally what happened when I typed this sentence.

If I wasn't committed to listening to nothing but Beats 1 for this review, I would have turned it off.

Somehow in spite of this schizophrenia, you end up with repeated music. It felt like I was hearing something I'd already heard about every other time I tuned in, which doesn't really bode well for Beats 1's mission of exposing Apple Music listeners to new music. This seemed like something very much out of the iHeartRadio (or Clear Channel) playbook. I really don't want to hear House Every Weekend by David Zowie for the sixth time.

To me, the programs from guest musicians are the saviors of Beats 1. More than the regular DJs, the guest artists weave a connecting thread with the music and don't play the same eight songs over and over.

Often times, the artist's playlists added up to be greater than the sum of their parts. I found that even if I wasn't particularly interested in the music being played, the flow of the playlist kept me interested. The main Beats 1 DJs have something to learn from these programs.

What I will say about listening to Beats 1 is that it was somewhat refreshing to not have choice. With Apple Music (and any other streaming service, for that matter), there is an overwhelming amount of things to listen to, which can sometimes paralyze users with indecision.

With Beats 1, you turn it on and it runs in the background, with nothing required of you.

B-B-B-B-B-B Beats 1, or a note about bumpers

Bumpers are the breaks in between songs when the radio station says their name or plays signature music. These need to stop. Does anyone like these? They're one of the worst things about radio, and they cheapen the Beats 1 experience.

I don't want to hear "BEATS 1. WORLDWIDE" or some inane variation on that theme in the middle of a song. It's unnecessary.

Worldwide?

Speaking of "worldwide," Beats 1 currently streams in 100 countries, which the service will remind you of ad infinitum because of its studios in New York, Los Angeles and London. I'd love to see what DJs stationed in other countries had to offer.

The music played is extremely western too: In my week, I only heard a handful of tracks in non-English languages, and the sole Indian song I heard was pretty westernized.

If Beats 1 wants to truly say it's worldwide it has to actually be worldwide. Three studios in English speaking parts of the world isn't quite enough.

Did I discover any music?

The whole point of Beats 1 is to get Apple Music users to discover new music, thus getting them to spend more time using the service. So, did it work for me?

Yes! I heard a lot of different music and I saved more than a few things to my library. The mainstream programs educated me a lot on modern pop music, and the artist programs exposed me to a lot of cool music I might have not otherwise heard.

With Beats 1, Apple Music sets itself apart from its less-discovery focused competitors well. Apple is smart to offer a variety of ways to expose its users to new music, rather than just playlists.

Will I keep listening?

For the most part, no. Mostly because I didn't like the mainstream programming offerings, and the sound quality is frustrating. Of course, these are subjective reasons and someone else might love Beats 1 for all of its loudness and jumpiness. I don't.

I will probably continue to listen to the artist-hosted programs as I found those interesting enough to overlook the sound quality issues. To me, those shows succeeded in the ways that the regular programming failed.

The artist shows also felt like a greater risk for Apple to take, and I have respect for that. It's kind of brilliant Apple will let an artist like Q-Tip weave an incredibly complex thread between hip hop, jazz and soul on a mainstream platform.

I'm happy that Beats 1 exists and I had enjoyable moments listening to it, but most of the time it just made my ears hurt.

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